It’s time again for the annual Summer Reading Series! For the fifth summer in a row, the Reading Series will be a place to deepen our relationships with each other; expand our political analysis, and inform our organizing and teaching in the upcoming year. Education justice advocates around the country are asking about our Reading Series, and many are building their own and Rethinking Schools magazine just featured an article about this work!

This year, based on survey results, WE and TAG are excited to announce 15 book groups. You can join groups organized by the Philadelphia Black History Collaborative; educators focused on ending white supremacy; members of the immigration justice ItAG and committee; and leaders in the Restorative Practices Project. Other groups will focus on building organizing skills; reading empowering works of fiction; growing our historical and current understanding of systems and structures that form our education system. For the first time, we have a reading group meeting in the Northeast, and groups reading books paired together around a common theme.

This summer, we continue the tradition of bringing together people from all walks of life and all parts of the city -- parents, teachers, nurses, counselors, activists, community members, students, and anyone else! All are welcome!Please sign up here!

And come to the Summer Kick-Off Happy Houron June 9, from 4:00-7:30PM at Maximum Level Lounge (5118 Sansom Street) to find out more about the reading groups, celebrate the end of the year, enter a raffle to win a copy of one of our books, and join the movement for racial, social, and education justice in Philadelphia.

The Caucus of Working Educators/Teacher Action Group Summer Reading Series is back for the fourth summer of learning together!

Every summer educators, organizers, parents, and community members meet across Philadelphia to read and discuss books. These book groups allow us to build relationships with each other, create new opportunities for leadership, and connect political education back to our organizing.

The poll closes on Monday, May 22 at midnight. After we vote, we will connect selected books to facilitators and begin registration! If you are interested in facilitating a book group this summer, contact Kathleen Riley.

Are you excited yet? If so, please join us the Summer Reading Series Kick-Off to preview the books, meet the facilitators, connect with other readers, and celebrate the end of the school year:

In 2014, when the Caucus of Working Educators was just a few months old, WE teamed with TAG-Philly to offer 9 book groups with about 85 participants for the purpose of bringing people together and learning about social justice unionism, threats to public education, and racial justice struggles in Philadelphia. Last year, WE and TAG sponsored twelve groups with 170 participants with a focus on racial justice.

This year, based on survey results, WE and TAG are excited to announce 15 book groups for 2016!

Want to meet other people committed to educational justice struggles and other social movements in Philadelphia? Want to learn about the school-to-prison pipeline, the #BlackLivesMatter movement, organizing, feminism, gender & sexuality in education, or another topic? Want to read a classic by bell hooks or Paulo Freire or a New York Times best seller by Ta-Nehisi Coates? Want to be part of a strong and growing movement of educators and allies committed to public education?

And come to the Summer Kick-Off Happy Houron June 2 at Frankford Hall from 4-7pm to find out more about the books and talk to other participants!

This summer, we continue the tradition of bringing together people from all walks of life and all parts of the city- parents, teachers, nurses, counselors, activists, community members, students, and anyone else!

It's full summer, and we hope you're having a chance to relax your body, mind, and soul. It's going to be an exciting year as we build a movement to fight for our schools and communities, and we all need to be well rested!

While you're relaxing on the couch or by the beach, catch up with some of the 11 different books being read as part of our summer book clubs. Each group has been posting notes, photos, and questions from their discussions-- so that you can take part even if you're far from Philly.

Multiplication is for White People, Lisa DelpitEssential Question: How can we teach deeply so that all students learn, while still covering content?

"The first year the district rolled out Math In Context, there was a lesson about building towers in there. I started the lesson with my class of 7th graders, and many became frustrated. Then it dawned on me, the lesson was based on squaring numbers, a concept taught in earlier grades. I had made the initial assumption that the kids would know how to do that, but they did not. So I backed it up and taught the basic skills first.

Did we achieve the grade level lesson? YES! Did it take twice as long as the Planning and Scheduling Time Line suggested? YES! Nia made the point that there is so much content to cover, we never get time to teach anything in depth. I find myself picking and choosing, what is a skill that is necessary that I can go deep with versus a skill that they may see again or is not that crucial in life that I can spend less time on (box and whisker plot, anyone?). These are the struggles many of us face on a daily basis." Read more from this book club here!

When educators and communities are isolated and devalued, every time we come together to share ideas, analyze, and build community is a radical act. That's how Kathleen Riley, Pd.D, describes last year's summer social justice reading series in her essay "Reading for Change: Book Groups as an Organizing Tool":

In participating in WE’s book groups, I could feel the educators of Philadelphia using their power and authority to better know themselves, their worlds, and their circumstances. I could see people building relationships with each other and also making connections between books, as participants in one book group shared analyses developed in other groups.

This summer, we hope to continue bringing together educators from all walks of life and all parts of the city- parents, teachers, nurses, counselors, activists, community members, students, and anyone else!

The results are in! Thank you for helping us choose the books for the 2015 TAG and WE Summer Reading Series. We are looking forward to spending time with you this summer to learn together and share visions for how to defend and transform our schools and city.

Take a look through the list below, and sign up for the book groups you’re interested in. We encourage everyone to join-- no education experience required, just the willingness to read good books and talk honestly about tough issues!

If you're interested in helping to facilitate any of these book groups (you don't have to have read the book!), please contact us at contact@workingeducators.org.

We are excited to announce a list of texts that WE and TAG members have suggested for the 2015 Summer Reading Series - but we need your help!

Please select your top THREE choices in the survey below so we can take the next step in generating a final list of groups and facilitators. The poll will close on Wednesday, May 13th at 5pm. If you're interested in helping to facilitate one of these book groups, email contact@workingeducators.org for more info.

This year, groups will be reading through the lenses of organizing and racial justice as we work together to continue to build a movement together. Last year, nearly 100 people from across the city participated in ten different book clubs to explore how teachers and activists are building a movement for quality public education.

If you have been reading or watching any news over the past few years, you have probably heard the name ALEC. Who or what is ALEC and why are they so interested in education “reform” in Pennsylvania and across the country?

ALEC stands for the American Legislative Exchange Council. This organization has an 8 million dollar annual budget that they use to write a “library” of sample bills that they want passed in as many states as they can influence. Outlets like the Center for Media and Democracy rightly call them a “corporate bill mill”.

Even if you are not quite sure what ALEC is, you have likely heard of some of their most popular legislation: “Stand Your Ground” laws, “Parent Trigger” bills, and voter ID requirements are some of ALEC’s most wide-spread and anti-democratic offerings.

These bills have been made law in many states, and some are currently rearing their ugly heads in Pennsylvania.

Education advocates believe that ALEC is now interested in the “reforming” of public education because there is much money to be made for private businesses as more schools are turned over to management companies and for-profit businesses receive tax breaks for funding private schools (through vouchers and tax credits).

The parent trigger bills, for example, allow a small part of a community to vote to turn-over its public school to a for-profit operator—most of these bills allow 180 days to undo a public institution that has served a community for many years.

Philadelphia’s own State Senator (and possible Philadelphia mayoral candidate) Anthony Hardy Williams—a charter school proponent, and also a failed charter-school operator--has sponsored just such a bill in Pennsylvania.

Another way to make sure public schools are turned over to private companies is to ease the charter school authorizing rules and regulations. In these ALEC-sponsored bills, authority to approve new charters is removed from local agencies such as school boards and school districts and given to the state itself, or other institutions such as universities. This forces districts to pay for schools they did not authorize and cannot afford and steals much-needed funding from true public schools.

Unfortunately, many Pennsylvania politicians have been taken in by ALEC’s anti-democratic agenda. Some are receiving campaign contributions from ALEC-sponsored PACs in order to bring ALEC’s agenda to our state, and some are members of ALEC or are simply sponsoring ALEC’s bills. What follows is a short list of ALEC-influenced politicians and their organizational allies in Pennsylvania. Some of these politicians have accepted tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars from ALEC-affiliated groups.

Sen. John Eichelberger (R-30)

Sen. Lloyd Smucker (R-13)

Rep. Warren Kampf (R-157)

Sen. Anthony Williams (D-8)

Rep. Fred Keller (R-85)

Rep. Garth Everett (R-84)

Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-12)

Re. Matt Baker (R-68)

Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R-34)

Rep. Scott Perry (R-4)

Additionally, here's a list of ALEC-influenced power players in Pennsylvania:

Charter school guru and big Corbett contributor Vahan Gureghian

Cyber Schools (especially K-12, Inc.)

American Federation of Children and Students First PACs

The Commonwealth Foundation

Susquehanna International Group

Thanks to the Center for Media and Democracy for its extensive and interesting report. We suggest you read the whole report for a comprehensive understanding of ALEC's reach in Pennsylvania.